Environmental Law Alert Blog

Through our Environmental Law Alert blog, West Coast keeps you up to date on the latest developments and issues in environmental law. This includes:

  • proposed changes to the law that will weaken, or strengthen, environmental protection;
  • stories and situations where existing environmental laws are failing to protect the environment; and
  • emerging legal strategies that could be used to protect our environment.

If you have an environmental story that we should hear about, please e-mail Andrew Gage. We welcome your comments on any of the posts to this blog – but please keep in mind our policies on comments.

2020 Canadian Law Blog Awards Winner

 Metro Vancouver has given second reading to its new Regional Growth Strategy (RGS), and sent the plan to its member municipalities for approval.  But the plan is coming under attack

If you haven’t heard of “ecocide”, I suspect you will in the coming years.  That’s because British lawyer, Polly Higgins, has made it her life mission to have the UN recognize ecocide as a 5th Crime Against Peace (alongside genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, W

On December 2nd 61 First Nations with territory in the Fraser River watershed spoke up against Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline – the Save the Fraser Gathering of Nations Declaration.  The same day the Nations published a full page ad in the Globe and Mail. 

On November 25th and 26th, 2010, representatives of many First Nations gathered in Williams Lake to hold the Save the Fraser Gathering of Nations meeting, adding their voices to the growin

On Wednesday (December 1st) the Honourable Mr. Justice Slade certified a class action brought by the Kwicksutaineuk/Ah-Kwa-Mish First Nation against the government of British Columbia. The class action alleges:

The Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) met this past week (Sept 27th to October 1st), passing – and declining to pass – a wide range of resolutions, many of them touching on environmental issues. 

We turn on the tap and it’s there. It rains, and then the water disappears. A stream flows along next to a residential neighbourhood, but others lie underground, captured in pipes and forgotten. All in all, most of us don’t give much thought to our urban watersheds, unless there’s a crisis.

We will soon see whether the federal government's officials are really listening to people in BC in their review of the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines and tankers project.

Rabble.ca has just published the following opinion piece from West Coast Environmental Law's Josh Paterson, which we reproduce below for our readers.

The BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the Enbridge Pipeline spill into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan have both brought international attention to the dangers of transporting oil over long distances.  Here in BC that’s meant increased scrutiny of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline and the possibility of oil tankers travelling the provin